know some who cannot understand that to take four from nothing leaves
nothing). First principles are too self-evident for us; too much
pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are annoying in music; too
many benefits irritate us; we wish to have the wherewithal to over-pay
our debts. _Beneficia eo usque læta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi
multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur._[34] We feel neither
extreme heat nor extreme cold. Excessive qualities are prejudicial to us
and not perceptible by the senses; we do not feel but suffer them.
Extreme youth and extreme age hinder the mind, as also too much and too
little education. In short, extremes are for us as though they were not,
and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.

This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain
knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere, ever
drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach
ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and
if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for
ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, and yet most
contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground
and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the
Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to
abysses.

Let us therefore not look for certainty and stability. Our reason is
always deceived by fickle shadows; nothing can fix the finite between
the two Infinites, which both enclose and fly from it.

If this be well understood, I think that we shall remain at rest, each
in the state wherein nature has placed him. As this sphere which has
fallen to us as our lot is always distant from either extreme, what